Column: Canada stepping up as a key role player in meeting the world’s need for natural gas

Canada has and should continue to expand its role as a natural gas supplier of choice to the world. The cautionary concerns are not markets, demand, resources or economics; but signals of regulatory confusion or activist interference. The industry and public can actively engage with vocal support to halt the pattern of activist interference in Canadian resource development.

The International Energy Agency forecast shows the scale of the need. Natural gas is a key energy supply that will continue to support economic development around the world. This energy need is created as energy and economic development are tied together; to support economic development we are required to facilitate cost effective energy. The ~ 2% annual growth rate in natural gas demand is expected to grow continuously tracking economic growth each year.

In sport, each team has key roles for players, drawing upon their specific skills and capabilities, to create a stronger team. Economics describes the roles and capabilities of countries as absolute and comparative advantages in the production of goods. The collective of nations that make up our world, benefits to its greatest extent, when we each best fill our roles.

Canada is endowed with surplus natural gas. CAPP has identified Canada as the fifth largest natural gas producer in the world with a 300 year supply. LNG allows Canadian natural gas to fill the world’s needs. Canada’s key comparative and absolute advantages include; a large resource which is regulated to insure world class leadership in safe, socially responsible and environmentally managed development. Economically, Canada’s Montney gas formation can compete head to head in scale and economics with leading gas production world-wide. As an illustration of this competitive strength, the Montney lays claim to net backs of $18.03/BOE vs $15.03 for the US Marcellus flagship play.

As Canadians step up to fillour role effectively as part of the world energy supply team, our regulation will need to continue to be world leading. World leading does not mean “more” regulation it means effective regulation. Public support for timely improvements, not activist interference, is needed now more than ever. Critiquing is not opposition; it is actively working together for enhancement.

Recent experiences teach us the industry and public need to speak up for their resource developments. The opponents to resources are loud and vocal.

“If you are going to add eight to 10 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and you are going to meet our targets, then all other aspects of the economy must make up the difference,” said Weaver.

“I am calling on both the government and the official opposition to join me in supporting a moratorium on horizontal fracking in British Columbia,” Weaver said

The Pembina Institute now calculates the GHG emissions from PNW LNG alone will be between 9 and 10 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030. B.C.’s total targeted limit is 13 Mt C02 by 2050, the Pembina Institute says. “It is for these reasons that the Pembina Institute recommends that the Environmental Certificate for the Project be rejected,” Matt Horne, Pembina’s B.C. director, tells McKenna in a letter dated September 7.

The positions noted are nonsense. Canada producing LNG decreases CO2 worldwide; the test is not a local subset of emissions it’s what will happen to the total world-wide emissions that counts. Fracking is a technology 100 years old, well studied and with the increased scale, regulation and best practice has been updated. However it will not be facts and objectivity that will advance LNG it will be regular, vocal and vigorous support for resource development by the public and industry.

Canada has a role to fill on the world energy stage: cost effective and best in class natural gas.

Canada has an LNG opportunity to capture, for our own economic development. Canadians working in partnership; the public, industry, communities, regulators and governments, can create value and meet needs. Utilizing responsible regulation and engagement can balance the economy and the environment.

Glen Schmidt is President of GCS Resource Management Ltd., an oil and gas technical and business advisory services company in Calgary, AB